The Hindu deity Yama seated on a buffalo

Yama is the pan-Asian god of the dead (think Hades in cultures where Hindu or Buddhist thought has predominated). But Yama is far older than his twelfth century Cambodian manifestation might suggest. Indeed, he first appears in the ancient Indian Vedic texts, which date from approx. 1500 BCE. According to them, Yama had originally been a human of divine parentage. In due course, however, he became the first human to actually die. This feat transformed Yama into the “the first of the ancestors” (pitr, cognate with Latin pater) in the language of the texts.

In becoming “first of the ancestors,” Yama blazed the trail to immortality. His rituals center on the offering of pinda, balls of rice, to the ancestors. Through these offerings, the living secure the immortality of those who came before, each generation in its turn, ad infinitum.